I
recently went to the Tate Britain to meet a friend and take the children to see
Phillyda Barlow’s gigantic strange and interesting sculptures in the Duveen
Galleries. They enjoyed the sculpture
but the most interesting gallery for me was the one where Chris Killip’s
photographs are exhibited.
Sadly
by the time we came across that gallery the boys had had enough so I had to
whizz though the photos and I am left with vague impressions so aim to return
soon. However, I bought a book on the way
out expecting it to be a record of the images in the gallery. The book was actually about Chris Killip’s
time with a group of people who were mining for sea coal in a village called
Lynemouth near Newcastle-upon-Tyne and published in 2011, connected to an
exhibition in the Museum fur Photographie
Braunschweig and GwinZegal, Centre d’Art et de Recherche[1]
in Germany during that year.
Seacoal
records a community that was closed to outsiders and immensely guarded but
because Chris Killip had had a chance encounter with one the group elsewhere he
was eventually (after a few years of trying and failing) invited in. He spent several years photographing the
community as their lifestyle and source of income came to an end.
The
photographs are black and white and taken on a plate camera, which he seems to
have set up in the most incredible places, right on the edge of the sea at times
where some photographs have captured horse and carts being driven into the sea by
the miners to collect coal. The work
looks terrifying and dangerous. His use of the plate camera at times seems fraught with potential catastrophe especially as he describes the men charging him before they've given permission to be photographed.[2]
What
is so compelling is Killip’s ability to capture grittiness and genuine toughness, as well as an immense sense of warmth. You are left with a clear appreciation about how
very hard these people worked and how different their lives were to one’s own,
how arduous some aspects of their lives must have been but also of how closely knit they were, their joy, self-reliance, sense of community and pride. Killip doesn’t look at them from any position
of superiority but instead with a great deal of respect and admiration. He seems to be showing us something
exceptionally important that we may have lost or even never had.
I am
struck by the notion of a photographer placing himself in a community, not
because he is being paid by some magazine, but through his own volition, and
going to quite some trouble in order to do so, over a period of several years
to record and capture people’s lives.
The
sea coalmines are no more and there is now only a caravan park for Travellers
in its place. The book is a record of a
way of life that existed for many decades, even centuries and captures it just
before its final end, during a time when industry in England was being
transformed, eroded and in many places shut down altogether.
Chris
Killip was born in 1946 on the Isle of Man.
He left for London where he worked for advertising photographer, Adrian
Flowers, until he was able to stop commercial work and take the sort of
photographs he wanted to. He has been exhibited frequently and all over the
world. His work is currently on display
at Tate Britain, London.
His
book, “In Flagrante was reproduced in February 2009 within
one of Errata Editions' "Books on Books". In a review of this
reproduction, Robert Ayers describes the original as "one of the greatest
photography books ever published"[3]
Background
information about Chris Killip obtained from:
·
Seacoal,
Chris Killip, Published 2011, Steidl GwinZegal
[1] Seacoal, Chris Killip, 2011,
Steidl GwinZegal
[2] Introduction, Seacoal, Chris Killip, 2011,
Steidl GwinZegal
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